Chapter 24: The Flat Holds

Callum came back down the stairs at seven minutes past eight.

Vera heard his feet on the third step — the creak she had noted without noting, the particular compression of old timber under a particular weight, now inseparable from a sound she had apparently been learning for decades. She did not look up from the table. She waited. Edmund, in his chair beside the window, was watching the door with a quality of attention she had not seen from him in three years, focused and specific, the attention of a man who has decided to be present for what comes next.

Sable's hands were flat on the table. She was not looking at her notebook.